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Ted Stevens walks off of a stage at an election party in Anchorage Tuesday.
AP Photo

Some districts have yet to be called, and several more Republican losses may soon be confirmed. The GOP could lose additional seats in Maryland, where Democrat Frank Kratovil is favored to take retiring Rep. Wayne Gilchrest’s seat, Virginia, where Rep. Virgil H. Goode looks to be headed for a surprise defeat, and Idaho, where incumbent Rep. Bill Sali trails challenger Walt Minnick with nearly all precincts reporting.

There is also a competitive runoff election in Louisiana’s 4th Congressional District, where Democrats are fighting to take the seat of retiring GOP Rep. Jim McCrery.

Still, even in a worst-case scenario — one in which Republicans go down in all those undecided races — the GOP’s net loss would total only 22 seats — a damaging setback, but not the bloodbath they feared and some Democrats anticipated.

As the results came in Tuesday night, National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Tom Cole (R-Okla.) said it looked like his team would come through “a little bit better than some people might have expected.”

While retiring Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va.) and anything-but-retiring Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) suggested Tuesday that their party was lost and in need of a dramatic new direction, the election results — at least in the House — indicate that Republicans suffered as much from Obama’s popularity as they did from their own woes. It’s unlikely that Democrats could have beaten Thelma Drake in Virginia or Steve Chabot in Ohio or taken two Alabama House seats without a huge surge in black turnout.

Republicans cannot so easily explain away Marilyn Musgrave’s loss in Colorado and Christopher Shays’ defeat in Connecticut. And House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) can’t be unhappy as she surveys what’s shaping up to be the most commanding Democratic majority in a generation.

But as NRCC staffers returned to work Wednesday morning, many of them were breathing sighs of relief. A 20- or 22-seat loss is hardly a victory, but it’s not the sea-changing — and majority-robbing — 30-seat loss the Republicans suffered two years ago. Just a week ago, the NRCC staffers were braced for worse. But they say they saw the Democrats’ wave crest just a little too early — and that it was starting to recede as voters went to the polls.

House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) — whose future might have been in doubt if losses had piled higher — announced Wednesday morning that he’s running for another term atop his party. And the NRCC’s Cole — who could have been thrown under the bus at any number of points this year — will now make a play to stay on for 2010.

Readers' Comments (53)

It's true that Democrats fell short of the working majority they would need in the Senate to act unilaterally. As long as the Senate allows unlimited debate without a 60-vote majority, an Obama-Biden administration will need to reach out to the Republican minority.

With the economy deserving the highest priority, I hope Obama and Congress can eventually agree on universal health coverage. Americans deserve a better healthcare system; heck, the economy needs a better healthcare system.

I'm saddened to hear McCain supporters on C-SPAN express so much fear today. Republicans have successfully made their supporters afraid of the 20th century. They now seemingly long for the Middle Ages.

When Bill Clinton was voted president, he promised Americans he would run the most honest administration in recent history. That pledge followed wholesale indictments and convictions during the Reagan-Bush I terms.

Despite Clinton's personal failings, and the sham impeachment the GOP forced the country through, Clinton kept his word.

There were fewer indictments and convictions in Clinton's presidency than in those of his Republican predecessors.

Now comes the Barack Obama administration. The first expectation that Americans should have is that an Obama administration will appoint able public servants without self-interested ties to the industries they must regulate.

The Democratic Party has two to four years to prove itself to the American public, and I believe they will.

Republicans are falling into the same trap they have fallen into the past. What they fail to realize is Independents like myself are giving both parties a chance to work things out. I hope this will be possible but if it isn't the one that does the least damage will have a landslide in the next election.

Being pompus with denial will not solve your problems Republicans. The only thing which will solve you problem is stop being greedy and do the job you were sent to Washington to do.

Democrats you do not escape the clutches of what you failed to do when elected with majority. You are the party of liberals and how liberal you will be will determine your fate in the next election. So gleefully believing you have the mandate which you failed to use two year ago will be your final curtain call for audacity of hope if you fail to make good on promises to the working class.

But as a citizen I am not going to get involved in criticizm and smearing of the new President. I am not going to sit and wait for him or his administration to make a mistake so that I and other fellow citizens who supported Senator McCain could say: "I told you so!"

As an independent voter with no party affiliations I promised myself to try my best to be open and remain independent of either major party's interests.

I think now more than ever Americans need to cool down and get somewaht selfish - I believe it is in our best interests to have reasonable balance on the Hill.

It seems logical that this balance can only be achieved if there is enough Democrats and Republicans on the Hill to keep each other alert, creative and honest (although I am not 100% sure if "honest" and "politician" even go together).

I also wish these two parties stop pointing fingers and fighting with each other and start working for us.

I can already see the dog fights forming over those undecided Senate races. The Coleman-Franken one will be stolen with a Dem at Sec of state. The Alaska one might work out to a stevens win, but there will likely be another election when he goes to jail. The Dems will pour millions into the Georgia revote. With the huge tide toward the dems it will be very hard for the Gop to hold.

A filibuster is all that would stand between the people and the more extreme liberal policies.

I will be behind Romney 100% if he remains on the scene going into the next few years.

But these corrupt Alaskan Republicans do us no good whatsoever. The way Alaskans rally around corrupt politicians is quite telling. America in general has moved beyond these types even though a segment of the public accepts them. People like Palin and Stevens that have benefited by kickbacks in the most pork barrel filled state in the union.

Tears streaked the faces of the young conservative activists, heartbroken by the disastrous news.

It was Feb. 7 at the Omni Shoreham Hotel and I had stepped down to the exhibition hall where scores of attendees at the Conservative Political Action Conference gathered in front of a large plasma TV. They watched in stunned disbelief as former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney announced he was suspending his presidential campaign.

"If I fight on in my campaign, all the way to the convention, I would forestall the launch of a national campaign and make it more likely that Senator Clinton or Obama would win," Romney told the audience in a nearby ballroom, his speech relayed to the exhibition hall via closed-circuit TV. "And in this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign be a part of aiding a surrender to terror."

Some of those staring at the TV dabbed moisture from the corners of their eyes. Others just let the tears flow.

Scarcely an hour earlier, many of those same faces had been beaming with joy. The young volunteers swarmed over the hotel lobby, offering Romney lapel stickers to conferees arriving for the governor's CPAC speech. While they eagerly boosted their candidate, however, I was among the journalists scrambling to confirm the news that had just flashed over the Drudge Report: Romney would quit the race.

One of my friends was volunteering with Evangelicals for Mitt. As I crossed the lobby she grabbed my arm and asked: "Stacy, is it true?"

I explained the situation as I understood it at that point. My friend was flabbergasted. "But why? It doesn't make sense," she said. I agreed, but had no insight to offer, nor any consolation for her tears. And I had a story to file.

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) saw roughly a million dollars pour into her opponent’s campaign after she went McCarthy on Chris Matthews and urged the news media to investigate whether members of Congress were “pro-American”; she won anyway.

I am very disappointed that Michelle "bring back McCarthyism" Bachmann won.

It certainly could have been worse, but it's pretty darn bad. Ignoring the decisive Obama victory (52% is a HUGE win in the context of recent US presidential elections), this election represents the second straight election that Republicans have lost seats in both the Senate and House. That's bad news and the decisive Obama victory just adds salt to the wound.

If Obama lives up to his word and Congressional Dems follow suit by reaching across the aisle and making some compromises on their platform, then they can grab a few moderate GOPs and avert the filibuster. Hopefully the Mac picks up that mantle on his side of the aisle.

i thought, from the beginning, that his background & his unique political positioning gave McCain chances to find votes that otherwise would have drifted away from the GOP. unfortunately, we got McCain v. 2.0 in this campaign, the one that made a Faustian deal and pandered to the base of his party, and inevitably tying himself to the failed policies of the Bush administration, when i'm not sure he really needed to do so. put any other GOP wannabes from the primary season up against Obama last night, in this political climate, and you would have seen 400 EVs and 60 Senate seats and a 100+ House majority for the Dems. in my opinion, McCain's candidacy essentially saved the GOP from slipping to a point of being politically irrelevant. but they're still a mess.